Last week, the NHL's top rookies for the 2015-16 season gathered in Toronto for a two day media blitz.
This week, the NHL and NHLPA are putting on a similar two-day event for the league's top stars. Daniel and Henrik Sedin are representing for the Vancouver Canucks.
Though the Sedins aren't new to this event, Kevin Bieksa was the Canucks' rep last season. Times have certainly changed—though I'm a little surprised that Bieksa's banner has yet to be removed from the False Creek side of the exterior of Rogers Arena.
Typically held in New York, this year's event was moved to Toronto as part of the promotional push for next year's World Cup of Hockey, which will get underway at the Air Canada Centre one year from tomorrow on September 9, 2016.
Here's a list of some of the other top stars on hand, from the
NHLPA website: "Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Steven Stamkos, Duncan Keith, Henrik Lundqvist, Tyler Seguin, Anze Kopitar and Evgeni Malkin."
If you're interested, Derek Jory has quite a detailed list of the twins' commitments over the next two days at
Canucks.com.
Here in Vancouver, our local scribes are getting back to work with some new interviews.
If you missed it over the weekend,
Ed Willes of
The Province spoke to Trevor Linden, who assured him that the "team plan is in place, and it’s not scribbled on a cocktail napkin."
Willes reminds us that so far, Linden and Jim Benning have added 13 new players since taking over at the end of the 2013-14 season. For his part, Linden continues to preach drafting and, especially, player development as the keys to future success.
For the most part, everything's status quo:
There are a few things we wanted to do last year. We wanted to get younger. We wanted to be fun to watch again. We wanted to integrate young players, and we wanted to make the playoffs. Those things will be how we measure success again.
Here's one small shift I noticed in the rhetoric. In the past, Linden has preached patience with developing young players, not wanting to rush them along. But now?
The only way we’re going to get better is to draft and develop our players. Then we have to do a good job of developing them and getting them here as quickly as possible. That takes up most of my time.
Maybe we will see the team show a greater willingness to give kids a chance over the upcoming season. Injuries to the regular lineup could play a big part in how much action players like Frank Corrado see, as well as whether players like Cole Cassels, Hunter Shinkaruk or Jordan Subban get call-ups from Utica.
On the topic of young players,
Iain MacIntyre of the
Vancouver Sun spoke with Jake Virtanen, who showed his usual chippy personality when asked about playing against Edmonton's Connor McDavid at this week's Young Stars tournament.
“I told him he better keep his head up,” Virtanen said this week. “He just laughed.”
Finally,
Jason Botchford of
The Province says that Bo Horvat is "a changed, much more self-assured man heading into sophomore season."
Botchford emphasizes Horvat's leadership qualities and maturity coming into the new season, including his takeaways from how he was deployed by Willie Desjardins last year.
“You don’t want to put a 19-year-old in those kinds of situations where he feels he has to score points or he feels he has to win that big draw,” Horvat says, like being 19 was three or four years ago.
You know, it does feel that way, even if he’s just 20 years old now.
“It’s such a young age. Whenever Willie did put me in those situations, I knew what I had to do. I knew what to do on the power play. I knew when I was out there to win a big draw.
“Toward the end of the year, he started gaining that trust in me. I gained a ton of respect for him.”
Jake Virtanen's personality seems a lot more freewheeling than Horvat's—perhaps, closer to Hunter Shinkaruk. Heading into Penticton, I'm especially curious to see if Virtanen can play with enough discipline to give himself a chance to make the Canucks, or if he still has some growing up to do.
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